The retirement home sat beside a wide bend in the river, beautiful enough that families repeated the same phrase whenever they first toured the grounds. Hell, if this ain’t heaven, they would say, relieved by the gardens, the sunlight on the water, and the absence of everything they had feared a nursing facility might look like. Staff heard the remark so often that it eventually became background noise.
Residents began saying it too.
A newly hired nurse noticed the pattern because she worked nights and paid attention to strange repetitions. People nearing death often used the phrase within a day or two of passing. They said it while gazing toward the river, usually in late afternoon when sunlight reflected off the bend and filled the rooms with a pale gold haze. Some smiled. Others sounded surprised. One resident who had been mostly unresponsive for a week sat upright, spoke the sentence clearly, then asked whether someone had remembered to open the gate.
There was no gate.
The nurse began keeping records in a notebook hidden behind her locker. Room number, time of day, weather, exact wording, date of death. She discovered that the phenomenon followed the light rather than the residents. During summer, when the sunset angle shifted, the affected rooms changed accordingly. People housed away from the river rarely said anything unusual until they were moved temporarily into a room with the proper view.
Then she heard herself say it.
She was alone in the supply closet on an ordinary Tuesday, folding towels with no window nearby. The words came out softly in a voice she recognized only after hearing it. It belonged to a resident who had died the previous winter.
After that, she started avoiding the riverside corridor during late afternoons. The avoidance lasted three days. On the fourth she found herself standing before the largest window on the floor with no memory of walking there.
The river below looked unusually still. Reflected sunlight formed a bright path across the surface, ending exactly beneath the building. For several seconds she thought she could see figures standing along that path, shoulder to shoulder, facing upward.
The facility has since installed blinds in every riverside room. Residents complain about them constantly and somehow manage to raise them shortly before sunset, even those who cannot leave their beds unaided.
The nurse has stopped trying to prevent it. Her notebook now includes another column labeled VISITATION, because several residents who spoke the phrase did not die afterward. They simply became calmer, as though reassured by something they had seen.
She finds that possibility more unsettling. Death would at least explain why the river seems to be calling. Whatever appears in the light may instead be convincing some of them that they already know the way back.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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